Due to legitimate concerns raised about a Migration Advisory Committee survey on international students, we will not be sharing it further. While it’s important that policy makers hear from students about international students’ positive impact, views must be sought appropriately

A Universities UK spokesman said: “Due to legitimate concerns raised about a Migration Advisory Committee survey on international students, we will not be sharing it further.

“While it’s important that policy-makers hear from students about international students’ positive impact, views must be sought appropriately.”

UUK vice-chancellors will also be deleting all tweets of the survey.

Prof Bueltmann said: “In principle there’s nothing wrong with a survey on the impact of international students, but say you look Asian and you’re actually British, but the student standing next to you thinks you’re Asian?”

This could mean the person is basing their views on the wrong information, she suggested.

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An online message replaced the survey after it had been closed

Her view was mirrored by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which questioned whether the survey was “encouraging baseless speculation about those who seem different?”.

Prof Bueltmann‏ also suggested that those who had a view that immigration was a bad thing would have been more likely to fill it in.

“It’s a bit like with Tripadvisor, you’re more likely to fill it in if you’ve had a bad experience,” she said.

“The survey unquestionably contains loaded/leading questions that force respondents to problematise international students in a way that they may never have naturally done.

“If I had done this as a research project, I’d be in trouble with my ethics committee now.”

She added that the whole design of the survey was flawed because anyone could fill it in, and repeatedly if they used different computers.

Posting on Twitter, Matthias Eberl, engagement lead at Cardiff University’s Systems Immunity Research Institute, said: “A student survey that’s openly accessible to anyone and can be filled in multiple times. Whatever the results from this survey, they are utterly meaningless.”

A lawyer, Ewan Kennedy‏, also completed the survey, saying he found it “very odd”.

He said he “went through it as an experiment and it shot off at the end without needing any identifier – oops!”

The survey was part of work commissioned by former Home Secretary Amber Rudd, after the government came under pressure to remove international students from net migration targets.

In her commissioning letter of August 2017, she said the committee had never undertaken a full assessment of the impact of international students.

“We would like to have an objective assessment of the impact of international students which includes consideration of both EU and non-EU students at all levels of education,” the letter said.

“This assessment should go beyond the direct impact of students in the form of tuition fees and spending, including consideration of their impact on the labour market and the provision and quality of education provided to domestic students.

“This should give the government an improved evidence base for any future decisions whilst the ONS goes through the process of reviewing the contribution it thinks students are making to net migration.”

Before the survey was decommissioned, a spokesman for the Mac had said it was part of its ongoing work looking at the impact of international students in the UK.